News and Announcements

Four Seasons Brewing in Latrobe, PA, contacted us to say they have a bunch of hops that they're not going to use, and they'll sell them at cost to local homebrewers. If you're interested contact Mark Pavlik directly. All hops (except chinook) are 2014 crop, in unopened bulk packaging, and have been stored in a freezer. Chinook are 2013. Prices are:

New Officers
If you missed the last few meetings, you might not be aware that the club has a couple new officers. First, thank you to Andy Weigel and Malcolm Frazer for their service to the club. Now, please welcome our new Vice President, Chris Marasti-Georg (CMG), and our new Secretary, Mark Minuto. Thanks for stepping up, guys! Next fall we'll be looking for folks to consider running for the President & Treasurer offices. If you're an avid homebrewer and want to keep this club running, please give it some thought.

Committees
We've been talking about forming committees for a while now, and now is the time to do it. We need you to get involved and help plan some things.

- NHC 2016 Club Night Booth - If you are going to the National Homebrew Conference in Baltimore (June 9-11, 2016) and would like to pour your homebrew at the TRASH booth on Club Night, please get in touch with us. We will add you to a mailing list where all the planning will be done. CMG will be the chair of the NHC 2016 committee. There's lots of details to work out, and we can't get this done without your help. Not sure what club night is all about? Here's a video that sums it up pretty well.
- Competition Committee - Organizing the TRASH competition takes a lot of work. This year a few of us did just about all of it, and it was difficult to get it all done. Going forward we need club members to get involved to help out with some of the tasks - planning, getting supplies, seeking sponsor donations, etc. If you would like to help out for 2016, please get in touch. We need your help to keep the competition going strong. And Weigel will continue to be the judging coordinator. Jack & Andy will co-chair the competition planning committee.

Competition Date
The shipping deadline for first-round entries for the 2016 National Homebrew Competition has been announced. Entries must be received by Wednesday, March 9th, 2016. Recall that we were talking about having the TRASHcompetition on March 12th, thinking this would be early enough that entrants could use their feedback from the TRASH competition to help decide which beers to send to NHC. Since that's obviously not going to work, we're re-evaluating when exactly to hold the competition. We still want to hold it in the spring, but we're thinking about early April instead of early-mid March to give us a little more time to organize things. Most importanly, though, we want to establish a consistent date to hold it for years to come. We'd like your input - does having the competition before the NHC deadline matter to you? If you have an opinion on this, send us an email to say so.

NHC Competition Entries
Since it's looking like TRASH 26 will be held too late to serve as a means of vetting your NHC entries, we are working on other ideas to help our club members get input on which beers to send to NHC. The first option is Andy Weigel's onlinebeerscores.com. We've mentioned this web site many times before. We are working out details to allow club members to register the NHC-candidate beers on the site and bring them to the January meeting and have some of the experienced BJCP judges in the club take those beers home and complete a detailed score sheet for them. Keep an eye out for another communications with the details about this. Another option we're thinking about is to have a separate get-together outside of the normal club meetings just for those looking to get feedback on the potential NHC entries. This meeting would be open only to those entering NHC, and you'd have to bring your beers to it to get feedback. If you plan to enter NHC, please let us know so we can get an idea of how many people will be at the gathering, and how many beers might need judging through onlinebeerscores.com.

BJCP Exam - Beer Needed
There is a Beer Judge Certification Program tasting exam on February 20th. Unfortunately there are no seats available in the exam, but the exam administrator is looking for homebrew to use in the exam. He's looking for seven 12-ounce bottles of each sample provided. The exam should include a range of beer from heavily flawed to excellent, so any homebrew you have to donate will be appreciated. If you have any beer that you'd like to donate, please email us and we'll get you in touch with the exam administrator. Please DO NOT mention any details about your beer in the email, because some TRASH officers are taking the exam and they cannot know anything about the beer.

Club Membership Dues
The year is just about over. This means your 2015 club membership is about to expire. Please take a minute to renew your membership online. Or plan to pay at the January meeting if you'd prefer. Your membership dues help keep the club running by paying for necessities like web site hosting, club liability insurance, and meeting & event supplies. In return, you get benefits like the ability to participate in club events such as the cider group buy, aha big brew, public pouring events like the Big Pour, and more.

Association for Women in Science - Science & Brews
The Association for Women in Science is holding their inaugural Science & Brews event on Friday, November 13th from 6-8pm at the Citizen Science Lab (inside Energy Innovation Center across road from Consol Energy Center). Their goal is to both recruit new members and to promote enthusiasm for science and science education in a fun, spirited, and accessible way. They're expecting approximately 40 people for the event and have asked if we'd like to set up a club booth to share some homebrew and promote our club. If you have a keg or two of beer to share and would like to attend this event for TRASH, please get in touch with us by this Friday, October 30th. If we get at least two brewers to volunteer and four varieties of beer (the kegs should be at least half full) then we'll commit to being there.

Cider Group Buy
Thank you to club members Nick Yorty, Charlotte Kymer, Mike Beattie, and Brian Robbins for running the show at the cider pickup on Saturday. And thank you to MoreBeer for donating loads of free white wine yeast, yeast nutrient, and potassium metabisulfite. With 30 people getting in on the group buy, we hope to see lots of cider entries in the TRASH 26 Homebrew Competition next spring!

Club DuesWe are now accepting payment for 2016 club dues. If you're a 2015 dues-paid member, you can re-up your membership for next year any time between now and January 31, 2016 without falling off the active members roster. You can pay in person at a club meeting, or you can pay on the club web site at:

Dues remain the same as before: $15 for individuals and $20 for household memberships. Your dues help keep the club running and allow us to organize events that feel are well worth the price of membership, and hope that you agree! If you're considering joining the club, if you join now you'll be covered for the rest of 2015 and all of 2016.

Officer Elections
As we've been announcing at the past few meetings, officer elections will be held at the November meeting for the positions of Vice President and Secretary. Nominations were technically due at the October meeting, but as we announced at the meeting we will extend that by one week. If you would like to nominate yourself or someone you know for one of these roles please contact us by the end of Sunday, November 1st. We currently have one nomination for each position:

Vice President: Chris Marasti-Georg
Secretary: Malcolm Frazer

Note that Malcolm is the club's current secretary and has agreed to stay on if nobody else steps up to take on the role, but ideally we would love to have someone else take a run at the position, because having different people take on an officer role is important for maintaining a healthy club as it promotes participation and incorporates new ideas and points of view when determining the club's direction.

Mystery Grain Competition
Wow - what a turnout we had at Hitchhiker yesterday from folks looking to get in on the mystery grain! Remember that one of the rules of the game is that you have to bring some of whatever you brew with it to the holiday party for the mini competition. We're looking forward to trying all these beers!

November Meeting Location
As was announced at the club meeting on Sunday, Helicon Brewing will not quite be ready to host a club meeting in November. The realities of building out a brand new brewery (and the red tape and hang-ups that go along with it)unfortunately pushed the shedule back a bit. We are working on getting a new location for the November meeting and trying to keep the same date & time - Sunday, November 22nd at noon. We will meet at Helicon after the new year just as soon as the beer starts flowing!

2015 TRASH Holiday Party
Reminder that our annual holiday party will be on Sunday, December 5th at James Street Gastropub & Speakeasy. Full details are available here:

Thanks to a slight grain milling mishap at a local brewery, we have come into possession of about 45 gallons of milled mixed grain. The grain was milled about two weeks ago. We'd like to give this grain to the members and have a competition to see who can brew the best beer with it. To participate, come to the meeting this Sunday at Hitchhiker and bring a container big enough to hold 15 pounds of milled grain. The grain will be handed out first come, first served. Take your grain home, brew something with it, and bring the beer to the holiday part at James Street on December 5th where we'll have a mini competition to choose the best one. Here are the full details:

- The makeup of the grist is not fully known, but is likely to consist of: Rahr 2 row (a lot most likely), Caraaroma, Raw wheat, Honey malt, Belgian chocolate, and Roasted barley, plus less of the following, but still may be there: Biscuit, Munich 1, Caramunuch 1, and Carafoam

- You must be a dues-paid TRASH member to participate
- Bring a container large enough to hold 15# of milled grain. A 5 gallon bucket should be big enough
- Brew any style of beer you want using the grain. You do not need to use all of it if you want to make a smaller beer
- You can add up to 30% (by weight) of other fermentables - other malt, sugar, honey, whatever. 30% applies to the amount of the mystery grain you actually use. If you use 10 pounds of it, you can add 3 pounds of your own fermentables. If you use the full 15 pounds, you can add 4.5 pounds of other fermentables if you wish.- Use any hops, yeast, flavorants, process you want. The only fixed variable is that at least 70% of your grist must come from the mystery grain.
- Grain must be picked up at the meeting this Sunday at Hitchhiker.
- Beer must be brought to the Holiday party to be evaluated.
- The beers will be evaluated as a body of work (I.e. how it presents itself) as opposed to being judged against a specific beer style.

Competition & Awards Banquet
If you have entries in the TRASH XXV Homebrew Competition being judged at James Street Gastropub & Speakeasy next Saturday, October 10th, thank you! If you have signed up to volunteer, thank you some more! If you are signed up to volunteer but cannot make it for whatever reason, please contact us as early as you can to let us know so we can re-work the volunteer schedules for the day without having to scramble the day of the event.

If you are going to attend the awards banquet, please RSVP on the trash web site to let us know how many to expect! RSVP Here.

If is our pleasure to announce that Gordon Strong - BJCP President, Grand Master level IX judge, and author of Brewing Better Beer and Modern Homebrew Recipes - will be on site judging the competition along with the rest of the volunteers. Gordon will be signing books before & between & after the judging sessions, so bring your copy if you'd like to get it signed (or you can purchase a copy from him for $20). Gordon would also love to speak with judges at the lunch break about BJCP stuff as part of his role as our region's BJCP representative.

The judging sessions are open to competition volunteers only; judging is not open to the general public. However, the awards banquet is scheduled to start at 7:00 PM and is open to everyone. If you have entries in the comp, come to the banquet to hear the results and hopefully win some medals & prizes. We aim to start right at 7:00, unless judging runs a bit behind. Plan to arrive for the banquet around 6:45. The planned schedule for the evening goes like this:

Cider Press
Reminder: get your orders in for the fresh-pressed cider group buy! $4 per gallon, must be picked up in person at Soergel's on Saturday, October 24th. All orders must be paid for by the end of the day on October 16th. Please bring containers for your cider - buckets, carboys, kegs, whatever. If you need to purchase gallon jugs from Soergels, please let us know so we can give them a heads-up of how many we'll need. Full details:

Wigle Whiskey Homebrewers Competition
Wigle Whiskey is once again holding their homebrew competition on November 1st. This is not a BJCP-sanctioned competition and TRASH is not officially involved, we just want to pass this along as it might be of interest to you. Details available here:

September Meeting - Please RSVP
If you are attending the September Oktoberfest meeting on Saturday, September 19th, please RSVP. Armand and Sue prepare a wonderful spread of traditional Bavarian festival food for us, but they need to know how many they're serving. Do us a favor and let us know if you're coming, and if you're bringing guests please tell us. Full meeting details & RSVP here:

September Mini-Competition
The September meeting will see another quarterly mini competition. Bring out your best example of these styles and try to win the tasters' choice! The theme this time is malty, moderate-strength German ales & lagers. See the meeting link above for a complete list of accepted styles.

Bulk Cider Buy
If you want to purchase fresh-pressed local apple cider from Soergel Orchards, please plan to attend our bulk buy on Saturday, October 24th at 8:00 AM. The cider price is $4 per gallon and you MUST pay for it in advance. If you want cider, be sure to contact us and let us know how much. We'll respond with instructions on how to pay for it. Full details are here:

I see some folks have RSVP'd to the cider event but have not contacted us about how much cider they want. NO extra cider will be available for purchase at the event. All cider MUST be ordered and paid for in advance. If you show up and you haven't put your order in and paid in advance, you will go home without cider.

TRASH XXV Homebrew Competition
The annual TRASH Homebrew competition is nearly here, and this is the 25th annual edition of the event! Be sure to enter your beer, mead, and cider! In addition to the chance to win medals, bragging rights, and prizes, you'll get at least two competed BJCP score sheets back for every entry. This kind of anonymous feedback about your brews is invaluable in your quest to make better beer. Register your entries here:

The competition will be held on Saturday, October 10th. Entry deadline is Friday, September 25th at 7:00 PM.

We can always use more judges and stewards. If you're new to competitions, consider signing up to steward. It's a great way to see how competitions work and help out your homebrew club. It takes a lot of people to successfully pull off a competition. We'd love it if you were part of it! Judge & Steward sign-up is available at the same link as beer registration above.

TRASH XXV Homebrew Competition Banquet
As always, there will be an awards banquet after the competition. Like last year, it will be held in the evening after judging wraps up. There is no cover charge. Food and drink will be available for purchase. Also, all of the competition entries that did not win gold medals will be available for sampling. (Every entry consists of two bottles. The 2nd bottle is required for those that win 1st place in their category to be judged for best of show honors. The 2nd bottle from all the other entries is up for grabs.) Full details here:

Nemacolin Brews & Brats Festival
Nemacolin Woodlands Resort has invited us to pour our homebrew at their Brews & Brats festival on Saturday, October 10th. This is the same day as our competition which we truly hope you'll attend as a judge, steward, or even just come to the awards banquet to see how your beers showed, but if the competition isn't your thing and you have two kegs of beer that you'd like to pour, please get in touch ASAP. In return for pouring at the event, Nemacolin will give you a free night's stay at their resort. You need to provide two full kegs of homebrew to participate. Event details are available here:

E-mail sent by Member 184c802, Thursday, September 3rd, 2015 @ 11:28am

We've been offered the opportunity to have an informational booth in addition to our pouring station at this year's Steel City Big Pour. We have 2 volunteers to man it, but need 2 more for the afternoon session and 2 more for the evening session - or 2 people that are able to do both sessions.

The only requirement to particiapte here is that you are a dues paid member.

Just a reminder that we still have 2 open spots for the second session of the Steel City Big Pour event.

Event Details

Saturday, September 12th, 2015

Session 2 - 5-8PM

If anyone is interested in serving their homebrew, we require at least 2 kegs of decent quality homebrew per session. This is a big event, so we try to put our best foot forward. We have a very limited number of spots available.

In order to keep things running smoothly and keep our beer selection organized, we ask that anyone participating brings ONLY kegged beer. Brewers should bring no more than a total of 3 kegs per session. We're going to be rotating our beer less frequently than previous years. The goal is for brewers to not have to leave with nearly full kegs at the end.

Registration is now open to sign up to judge or steward. Please sign up at the link above if you're planning to volunteer!

The competition will be held on Saturday, October 10th, 2015 at James Street Gastropub and Speakeasy on the North Side.

Beer entry registration will open on Friday, August 28th.

The competition is limited to 300 total entries. Each brewer will be limited to five entries during the first two weeks that registration is open. After two weeks the per-brewer entry limit will be lifted. We do this to allow everyone that wants to get an entry or two a fair chance to get in before it fills up.

There is a chance we could raise the total entry limit to a number higher than 300. The number of beers we can handle is directly related to the number of judges and stewards that volunteer their time. If we get more judges and stewards committed early, we can raise the limit accordingly. If you're entering the competition, we'd greatly appreciate if you could help out at the competition. It's a fun day and a great experience.

The competition will follow the new 2015 BJCP Style Guidelines. All beer, cider, and mead categories will be judged. If you have an entry that meets a style listed in the 2008 guidelines, don't worry; it will slot into the new guidelines without issue. The old styles are all still there, just moved around in the ordering and grouping, and their definitions have been revised a bit.

Those organizing the press will be discussing it at the picnic on Saturday and will use the amount signed up for by then to determine how we go forward - where we buy from, whether we buy apples or already-pressed cider, etc. Please add your amount now if you want cider.

If any dues paid member is interested in serving their homebrew, we require at least 2 kegs of decent quality homebrew per session. This is a big event, so we try to put our best foot forward. We have a very limited number of spots available. Those who are able to bring at least 4 kegs of different beer and are available attend both sessions will be given priority.

In order to keep things running smoothly and keep our beer selection organized, we ask that anyone participating brings ONLY kegged beer. Brewers should bring no more than a total of 3 kegs per session. We're going to be rotating our beer less frequently than previous years. The goal is for brewers to not have to leave with nearly full kegs at the end.

How many kegs you'll be bringing, as well as what styles you anticipate bringing.

We have been asked to do a brewing demo as well. John Rozborski usually handles this but is unavailable this year. If you are interested in organizing this demo for both sessions and are able to bring your own brew setup, we can do it again this year. If no one is interested in leading the charge on this, we'll table it until next year. You can also email me directly at andyweigel@gmail.com to get on this list as well.

Hey everyone! If you're coming to the summer picnic or if you want to get in on the apple cider press, please read on as we need some input from you. Also please keep October 10th open to participate and volunteer in our annual competition. This is the 25th year for it, let's make it great!

If you are bringing family or guests, please post a comment under the meeting details to let us know. This is so we can buy the right amount of burgers, dogs, water, & pop.

The club is providing the basics mentioned above and we're havinga potluck to fill out the menu. If you're bringing something for the potluck please go here and leave a comment so somebody else doesn't bring the same thing:

Cider Press
Planning for the cider press is under way. Right now we need to know how much cider/apples to buy. If you want cider, please visit this link and post a comment with your name and how much you want:

Note that the cider press is one of the benefits of club membership. You need to have paid your 2015 dues to participate. In a couple of weeks we'll tally it up and work out the details of where and when to buy it. At that point we'll set up a means for everyone to pay for their cider - payment will be required ahead of time.

We need volunteers for the competition! Judges and Stewards. Please keep October 10th open to spend with us. Sign up on the web site once it goes live. If you have never volunteered at a competition before and are interested, come see us at a club meeting. We can talk about what's involved; it's not particularly overwhelming. Hopefully we can assuage any intimidating factors and help you get involved in the wonderful world of homebrew competitions!

Once the competition web site goes live you'll hear about it from us - we'll email the club, tweet about it, post it to facebook. Probably multiple times. The TRASH compeition is our club's marquee event. It's a great time, and we need everyone's help to make it so!

We received the email from the organizers of Beer & Sweat - the annual keg-only competition in Cincinnati - to let us know judge and steward registration is now open! The competition takes place on Saturday, August 22nd this year. General registration for entering your beers into the competition will open on July 8th. Hotel group rate information will be posted in the coming weeks. You. Should. Go.

Friday: Drive to Cincinnati. It's about 5 hours from Pittsburgh. Check in to hotel, drop kegs off in refrigerated truck, go out and enjoy the city's craft beer scene. Turn in kind of early because Saturday is a long day.

Saturday morning: Retrieve kegs from refer truck, set them up at our assigned tap locations. Make sure they're pressurized correctly and pouring right. Go get breakfast. Once the kegs are set up, you're no longer allowed in the keg room

Saturday, noon: Judge or steward a flight of beer. You're done by 3:00 or so.

Saturday, 5:00: The doors to the keg room open back up to judges, volunteers, BBL club members, and their guests. Dinner is provided for volunteers.

Saturday, 7:30ish: The awards presentation begins. TRASH wins a bunch of medals. But not as many as we'd like. We need you and your beer to be there!

After the awards are over, the party continues. Remember, there are about 350 kegs of homebrew in a banquet hall with as many people. Do the math. Things start to get a little blurry at this point, but it's OK because you're staying in the hotel. And because it's a bunch of homebrewers and their guests, eveyrone stays civil and has a great time. The party is usually still going well into the wee hours of Sunday.

Sunday: wake up (eventually), check out, drive back to Pgh. Look forward to next year.

Entering homebrew competitions isn't your thing? No worries. Don't look at this as just a competition. Look at it as an amazingly fun homebrew event that happens to have a competition. Go!

PS> Watch that video above. There's an oscar-worthy scene from the TRASH guys in the category of best stupid faces while Keith is trying to talk.